SpaceX opened trading Friday at $150 per share under the ticker SPCX following the largest IPO in history, with shares quickly climbing above $160 and pushing the company’s market capitalization beyond $2 trillion.
CNBC reports that SpaceX began public trading on the Nasdaq exchange Friday morning after pricing its initial public offering at $135 per share. The opening price of $150 represented an approximately 11 percent gain over the IPO price, though initial indications to trading desks had suggested a higher opening around $175.
Shortly after the market opened, SpaceX stock climbed above $160 per share, valuing Elon Musk’s aerospace and AI company at more than $two trillion in market capitalization. This milestone came as the company completed the largest IPO in history, raising $75 billion dollars through the sale of 555,555,555 Class A common stock shares. Almost 100 million shares have traded as of this writing.
Elon Musk and SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell participated in the opening bell ceremony, with Musk appearing remotely from the company’s Starbase headquarters in Texas while Shotwell rang the bell at the Nasdaq in New York City. The company also launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on the same morning, sending 29 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.
Shotwell told CNBC that SpaceX is looking for long-term investors and emphasized that the company’s focus remains on futuristic goals rather than quarterly earnings. “I wasn’t sure we would go public,” Shotwell said. “What folks who invest in SpaceX need to know is that what we’re doing is very futuristic.”
She described the massive retail investor interest in the IPO as reflecting Musk’s vision for the company. “He’s trying to make space open for everybody,” Shotwell said. “He wanted this IPO, he wanted regular people to be able to buy the stock, and a lot of folks participated at the retail level.”
Regarding potential business risks, Shotwell said she wasn’t seeing any current concerns that are particularly alarming. “I don’t think there’s anything sitting in front of us that I’m super worried about,” she stated. “I don’t see any technology or any endeavor that we’re looking at doing that I’m afraid we can’t do.”
The five lead underwriting banks are taking home a total of $500 million in fees from the offering. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will each receive approximately $100 million, while Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase will each collect around $75 million.
Read more at CNBC here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.
Read the full article here